


Back to sleep to re-dream me

by thesaddestboner



Series: Variations on Grief [3]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Angst, Community: bats_and_balls, Depression, Detroit Tigers, Dreams, Gen, Sleep Deprivation, Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-15
Updated: 2010-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaddestboner/pseuds/thesaddestboner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Rick doesn’t mean for it to become this <b>thing</b>. His life is just better when he’s asleep.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back to sleep to re-dream me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://bats_and_balls.livejournal.com/profile)[**bats_and_balls**](http://bats_and_balls.livejournal.com/) and [**emeh**](http://emeh.livejournal.com/)’s prompt, _"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?" — Ernest Hemingway._ This is sadly underdeveloped, obviously. I might expand on it later. 
> 
> Thanks to [**learnthemusic**](http://learnthemusic.livejournal.com/) and [**unreckless**](http://unreckless.livejournal.com/) for reading this over! 
> 
> Title from “Wake Up Exhausted” by Tegan & Sara.
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/thesaddestboner) and [tumblr](http://saddestboner.tumblr.com).

Rick doesn’t mean for it to become this _thing_. His life is just better when he’s asleep. It’s not one of those “Oh my God, I’m so depressed that I’m just going to sleep through the day,” kind of things (though he does do that on occasion). His life literally _is_ better when he sleeps because he can -

Well, he can do this _thing_ that he’s pretty sure means he’s having a mental breakdown or something.

He has these _dreams_. At first, they were just normal dreams. Showing up to the Metrodome before game 163 in his underwear (he had this dream for a while into the offseason, actually). Flying over treetops in Vermont with his brothers, in nothing but his pajamas (he hasn’t worn pajamas since the sixth grade). Getting chased by a giant spider through Times Square on New Year’s Eve (he was having some anxiety about New Year’s or something).

Then they started getting weird. Ryan Perry popped up in one of his dreams, which wouldn’t have been so strange in and of itself because sometimes Rick dreamed about his teammates. The weird thing is Rick _realized_ he was dreaming.

“You’re having a dream, Rick,” the Ryan in his dream had said. They were doing something utterly ordinary, tossing a ball around in the outfield or something.

As soon as Ryan said that, everything started changing. The sky went from a summery shade of blue to slate gray, and Rick could feel the hairs on his arms prickle. The smell of rain was in the air, thick and earthy.

Rick turned to Ryan. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

“ _You’re_ the one who’s doing this,” Ryan told him with a smirk, holding up his mitt. The ball flew out of Rick’s glove and into Ryan’s. “This is how you’ve decided it should be.”

“I decided we should play long-toss in the rain?” Rick asked, skeptical.

“Somewhere, in that brain of yours, you have.” Ryan tossed the ball high in the air, over their heads. “You can do anything you want here.”

Rick looked at the baseball and pictured it blowing into a million pieces, which it promptly did. Rick looked back at Ryan. “How are _you_ in my dreams?”

Ryan smirked and brushed bits of charred cowhide off the front of his jersey. “I’m a figment of your imagination, obviously.”

“So I’m basically talking to myself,” Rick said, shoulders slumping.

“Pretty much. You wanted me here so you dreamed me into being.” Ryan nodded to Rick and then to the bits of blown up baseball littering the grass. “I’d fix that if I were you.”

Rick concentrated hard on the baseball knitting itself back into, well, being a baseball and marveled as it did just that. “I can do _anything_ here?” he asked, bending down and picking up the ball.

“Yeah. It’s your head, man,” Ryan said. “You could screw Verlander’s girl here and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it if you didn’t want him to.” He laughs, high-pitched and hyena-like.

Rick tossed the ball back to Ryan. “This is freaky.”

Music started playing faintly in the background and Rick strained to hear it. It sounded a lot like Jason Mraz, and he made a slight face. Why would he be dreaming about a singer he doesn’t even like?

“Your alarm just went off,” Ryan told him. “Back to the real world for you. I’ll be here when you get back.”

And just like that, Rick was lying in his bed, tangled in his bedsheets, staring at his ceiling. Sure enough, a Jason Mraz song was playing on his clock radio. Rick punched the radio and it blinked off. He flopped back down in bed and rubbed his fists over his eyes.

He really hoped he wasn’t having a mental breakdown

-

Most of the things he dreams about are still pretty ordinary. It’s just that Ryan is in them a bit more than before, and Rick can twist and manipulate the dreams to become anything he wants. If he decides he wants a cheeseburger, a cheeseburger will appear in his hand immediately. If he decides he wants to go to Morey’s Piers, he’s there so fast it makes his head spin. It’s always just like he remembers, and there’s no height limit to stop him. He can even ride the Great Nor’Easter as many times as he wants and not throw up.

He starts trying to dream about baseball, about pitching, but he can never quite get the ball to go where he wants in his dreams no matter how hard he tries. If he tries to throw a cutter, it doesn’t quite cut or it cuts too much. Dream-Ryan (he starts calling him that in his head just to keep them straight) says that’s because he’s never thrown one in real life, so his mind has nothing to go off of. It makes sense to Rick.

He’s trying for what seems like the millionth time to throw a cutter, when Ryan’s chiding voice breaks his concentration.

“Give it up, Ricky. You can’t dream up something you can’t do,” Ryan teases.

Rick is standing on the mound (in the Superman pajamas he used to wear when he was a little kid, go figure) with a ball and glove. “Screw you.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Ryan says with a smirk.

“Thanks for the reminder.” Rick plucks the baseball out of his mitt and slides his fingers into the grip for the cutter. A catcher (not Laird, he never dreams about Laird for some reason) materializes at home plate and puts down the signs.

Rick goes into his motion and lets the ball fly out of his hand. The ball freezes in mid-flight. That’s never happened before. “What the hell, Ryan? What are you doing?” Rick turns to glare at Ryan, who’s standing where the opponent’s first base coach would normally be.

Ryan shrugs and throws up his hands in an _I don’t have any fucking clue_ gesture. “It’s not me, man. It’s all you.”

Rick turns and looks back at the ball, frozen halfway between the mound and home. He steps off and walks right up to it, waving his hand in front of and behind it. Nothing but air. He can even track the ball’s path from his release point.

“This is fucking weird. And annoying,” he mutters.

“Is there anything in your life that’s frozen like that baseball?” Ryan asks.

Rick looks back at him, scrunching up his brow. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you stopping yourself from doing something you want to do?” Ryan goes on, crossing his arms over his chest and smirking smugly at Rick.

“I don’t know.” Rick wraps his hand around the baseball and tries to pull it down, but it won’t budge. It’s like the ball’s been welded into place.

“That baseball won’t move until you figure out what’s keeping you from moving.”

“Gee, thanks, Dr. Phil.” Rick lets it go and stomps back to the mound.

“Anytime.” Ryan tips the brim of his cap at him.

Rick wakes up.

-

Rick starts sleeping in more than he should. The demands of his job kind of dictate crazy hours anyway. Sometimes he wishes he had a nine-to-five where the hours were, for the most part, set in stone. An accountant doesn’t have to worry about extra innings or rain delays. A banker doesn’t go to bed at one in the morning on some days and even later other days.

He dreams every night, even if he doesn’t remember come morning. Dream-Ryan told him this once, that he never _doesn’t_ dream, it’s just sometimes he can’t hold onto them. Dream-Ryan won’t tell him what he doesn’t remember though, which Rick thinks is kind of shitty of him.

“If you can’t, I can’t,” Dream-Ryan says.

“Then how do you know I dreamt something I couldn’t remember? Wouldn’t that kind of make it impossible? Wouldn’t you forget too?” Rick asks. He likes to challenge him sometimes.

“You’re always dreaming,” Dream-Ryan tells him with the patience of a schoolteacher, “even if you don’t remember in the morning. You obviously know this on some level or I wouldn’t know it either.”

“Okay,” Rick says. They’re sitting together in the dugout; Verlander is on the mound, throwing literal fireballs at the opposition. The Verlander in Rick’s dreams is even taller and hairier than the Verlander in real life. “Tell me this, then. Why are you the one I can talk to in my dreams? Why not another version of myself?”

Dream-Ryan looks at him. “Do you really want the answer to that?”

Rick starts to reply, but Verlander spontaneously combusts on the mound.

As he starts to shake off the cobwebs of sleep, he hears Dream-Ryan say, fuzzily, as if he’s somewhere off in the distance, “I guess you’ve got some unresolved issues with Verlander too. You should look into that.”

-

He finds that the worse and worse his season gets, the more detailed and involved his dreams become. They’re almost always about baseball now and Ryan is always there, without fail.

Rick wonders what it says about him that Ryan is the literal voice in the back of his head.

“You sure you want the answer to that?” Ryan materializes out of thin air in front of him.

“You have an answer for everything,” Rick says, “but you won’t answer that.”

Ryan sits down in the dewy infield grass and pats an empty spot next to him. “Pull up a seat, Rickster.”

“Rickster?” He sits next to Ryan and draws his knees to his chest.

“All of this is about how you think your waking life should be,” Ryan says. “You think you should throw cutters. You think Verlander should explode in a ball of fire.”

“I do _not_ think Verlander should - ” Rick protests.

“Yeah, you do. Or else you wouldn’t dream about it,” Ryan interrupts.

“Why did that ball freeze in the air that one time,” Rick asks, in a challenging tone. “Shouldn’t it just do what I wanted?”

“That wasn’t actually about baseball,” Ryan says, waving a hand dismissively. “It’s kind of confusing. That was . . . like a metaphor for something else going on in your life.”

“And you know all of this because I know it, on some level,” Rick concludes. Ryan nods. “You still haven’t explained why I’m dreaming about you.”

Ryan shrugs and flops on his back in the grass, crossing his hands over his chest. Rick does the same and looks at the sky. A few shapeless clouds float by.

“It wouldn’t be any fun if I just told you,” Ryan says.

“It’d make my life a lot less complicated,” Rick points out.

“Like I said, Rick. That’s all you.” Ryan sits up and looks down at him. “You’re doing this for a reason.”

Rick pulls a blade of grass free and holds it up against the sky. “My season sucks.”

“That’s some of it, but it’s not the only reason. You’ll get it.” Ryan reaches out and plucks the blade of grass out of his hand, tossing it in the air. It wafts away. “I’ll be here when you do.”

Rick wakes up.

-

Rick’s sitting in front of his locker after the game when Ryan skips over to him and punches him hard in the chest, grinding his knuckles. “The hell’s _that_ for?” Rick glares up at him, rubbing his nipple.

Ryan grins. “Way to be a stranger, dude. You’ve seriously gotta get out more. I’m starting to think you’re a vampire or something,” he says, his tone light and teasing. “Some of us are going out tonight. You wanna come with?”

Rick pulls his mouth into a slight frown. “Ryan, we see each other pretty much every day.”

“I know, but it’s not the same as actually, like, _hanging out_. I mean, when’s the last time you and me had a drink together?” Ryan pulls over Scherzer’s chair and sits next to him. “Not even gonna lie, man, we’re kinda worried about you.”

Rick furrows his brow. “Why?”

“You going all hermit on us ring a bell?” Ryan asks.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Rick says, shaking his head. “I haven’t gone _hermit_ on you.”

Ryan slings an arm around Rick’s shoulders and he jumps; he hadn’t been expecting that and he didn’t think Ryan could even touch him without one of them exploding or something. Ryan notices Rick’s flinch and he slips his arm away.

“Okay, man, what gives? Are you into drugs or something?” Ryan is smiling, but his eyes are concerned.

“No, I’m not into drugs. How are you even able to touch me? Aren’t we going to rip the space time continuum or something?” Rick jokes.

“Okay. Yeah, I think you need to talk to the doctor,” Ryan snorts, getting up and moving Scherzer’s chair back in front of his locker.

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Rick scoffs.

“I seriously have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, man.” Ryan shakes his head and goes back to his own locker.

Rick closes his eyes. “Wake up. This is just a dream.”

Ryan told him once that if you needed to wake yourself up, all you had to do was say it in your dream and you would wake up.

He doesn’t wake up.

Rick opens his eyes. He’s still there, in the clubhouse. It’s not a dream.

Rick rubs his hands over his face and groans into them. When he drops his arms, he notices Ryan is looking over at him, mouth drawn into a thin, unhappy line, his eyes worried.

“What is it?” Rick asks, sounding as tired as he suddenly feels.

“Nothing, man . . . I was serious about seeing the doctor, though. You look like shit.” Ryan steps back and slips his cap on.

“I’m fine,” Rick grumbles, standing up and brushing his hands off on the embroidered **Detroit** logo on his chest. “I’ve been kind of stressed, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“I noticed,” Ryan says, coming back over to Rick’s locker. “You look like you need some sleep, Ricky.”

“That’s the _last_ thing I need right now,” Rick says, snorting out a laugh.

“Just think about talking to the doc, okay? Wouldn’t want you to, like, collapse in a heap of exhaustion on the mound or anything.” Ryan offers Rick a flicker of a smile and heads off.

Rick stands in front of his locker, hands braced on the top shelf, and closes his eyes. After a few quiet minutes, Rick grabs his glove and heads for the field.

-

“You’re starting to confuse yourself,” Ryan says, when Rick tells him about the incident in the clubhouse later that night. “I noticed you stopped referring to me as Dream-Ryan, too.”

They’re sitting atop the giant stone tiger that graces the scoreboard in left field. Its eyes are glowing bright green. They pulse steadily with Rick’s heartbeat.

Rick stares down at the bullpens under them. It seems like they’re miles up in the sky. “I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not going crazy. You’re just trying to escape,” Ryan says, reaching out and touching his shoulder.

Rick looks at him, something unfamiliar jolting through him. “Escape? From what?”

Ryan doesn’t answer. “It seems better here, doesn’t it?” He pulls his hand away and the funny feeling fades.

Rick reaches up to rub his shoulder where Ryan had touched him. “Yeah, but that makes sense. Shouldn’t my dreams be better than real life?”

Ryan turns and kicks his feet. “I guess. But you shouldn’t spend all your free time here, with me.”

“I like talking to you. You’re the only one in my life who’s making any sense right now,” Rick says, laughing. “ _Baseball_ doesn’t even make sense to my anymore, man.”

Ryan looks back at him. “You’re using me as your crutch. You know that or else I wouldn’t be saying it,” he says, smiling a little. “You know what you’ve got to do, Rick.”

Rick stares at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you think this has gone on long enough?” Ryan grabs onto Rick’s hand. “Come on, Rick. Do it.”

“Do _what_?” Rick asks, trying to twist his hand away. Ryan tightens his grip.

“We’ve got to jump.”

Rick jerks awake and lies in bed, breathing hard, his heartbeat racing. He rolls onto his side to check the alarm clock; it’s only four in the morning.

He doesn’t want to go back to bed, though. He’s afraid of what Ryan is going to make him do.

-

He doesn’t sleep at all the next night. He plays a little World of Warcraft until his eyes get sticky with sleep, and then he makes a pot of coffee that he spikes with Red Bull.

That’s not such a hot idea though, because he just gets kind of tweaky and has to go out for a late night run to work off all the excess energy.

Rick runs and runs until his arms and legs hurt, until his chest is burning and he feels like his lungs will explode. His head is fuzzy and heavy with exhaustion, but he pushes himself toward an imaginary finish line that keeps moving farther and farther away.

He’s so tired but he knows if he puts his head down on his pillow, Ryan will be there, telling Rick to kill him.

-

Rick is practically a zombie by the third day, and he knows he has to fall asleep some time. And Ryan will be there, urging him to jump. Ryan also told him if he died in his dreams he’d die in real life.

Ryan wants him to kill himself.

But if Ryan is a figment of his imagination, that means Rick’s subconscious wants him to -

He cuts off that line of thought. He’s being ridiculous. He doesn’t want to kill himself, and neither does a figment of his imagination.

Rick finally allows himself to sleep. He isn’t going to let himself be afraid. He’ll face Ryan, and whatever happens happens.

Suddenly, Rick is back on top of the stone tiger with Ryan. Cold wind whips against his face and stings his cheeks. Everything is drab and gray. There are spindly trees growing in the outfield, looking like skeletal hands reaching to the sky.

“Your subconscious isn’t a very good place to be in right now,” Ryan says, breaking the silence.

“No shit, Sherlock.” Rick tucks his hands into his armpits to warm them. “I haven’t slept for three days.”

“You’re an idiot.” Ryan looks unaffected by the cold.

“Yeah, I kind of figured that out,” Rick mutters. His chilly breath curls up like tendrils of smoke.

Ryan lifts a foot over the edge of the tiger statue’s stone ear before pulling back. “Of course.” He looks at Rick, hands tucked casually into the pockets of his jeans. “So, are you going to push me or should I just jump?”

“You can jump?” Rick asks.

“Well, actually, I can’t. Unless you decide I should,” Ryan says, laughing. “So, what is it going to be, Rick?”

“I don’t want you to go,” Rick says.

Ryan thins his lips into a straight line. “If I stay, you’ll get worse.”

“And if you - go?”

“You’ll have to deal with all the shit going on out there.” Ryan waves his hand vaguely to indicate _out there_ \- in the waking world.

Rick sighs and rubs his chilly hands over his face. “I don’t want to deal with it.”

“I know,” Ryan says, his tone gentling, “but you have to. You can’t live here with me forever.”

“I want to.” Rick drops his hands and looks at Ryan, despairingly. “It’s better here.”

“It is. But you know why you can’t stay.” Ryan grabs onto Rick’s hands suddenly and pulls him closer. Ryan’s warm hands against Rick’s cold ones send a shock through him that he feels down his spine. “You already know all of this. Why drag it out?”

“Because I don’t know why - why I’m struggling so badly this season. I don’t know how to deal with it,” Rick says, keeping hold of Ryan’s hands. “It was nothing, it wasn’t anything, and then it started snowballing and now I can’t deal with it.”

“You can deal with it,” Ryan says, “and I wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true.”

“I _can’t_ , Ryan,” Rick snaps at him.

“You can too. You don’t need this anymore, Rick. You don’t need _me_ anymore.”

“You’re asking me to push you to your death so I can, what, figure my shit out?” Rick snarks.

“I’m telling you to. And I won’t die. I can’t, because I’m part of you,” Ryan says.

“I thought you said I’d die in real life if I died in a dream,” Rick says.

“If _you_ died in a dream. I’m only one part of you.”

Rick looks out toward home. It looks a little less gray, a little less cold now. The spindly trees are gone from the outfield too. He sees nothing but endless green grass.

“Okay,” he says, turning back to Ryan. “I’ll do it.”

Rick steps up and shoves Ryan hard in the chest. He falls back, arms flying out, and sinks like a stone. Rick doesn’t look over the edge.

He wakes up.

-

“I’m flattered you decided to hang out with us tonight,” Ryan jokes, when Rick steps up to him outside the bar they’ve picked out for the night. Ryan grabs onto Rick’s hand and pulls him into his chest in a manly hug.

Rick laughs and squeezes his hand. “You _should_ be.”

“We are, believe me,” Ryan says, laughing and stepping back. “You look better, man. Finally got some sleep?”

“Yeah,” Rick says, nodding and scuffing his heel on the asphalt. “Haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a while. Until last night, that is.”

“Good to hear.” Ryan slaps him on the shoulder and breaks away to pull open the door. “Welcome back to the land of the living, dude. We missed you.”

Rick laughs and follows Ryan into the bar. “Yeah, me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> The author of this piece intends no insult, slander, or copyright infringement, and is not profiting from this work. This story is a complete work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect on the nature of the individuals featured. This is for entertainment purposes only. If you found this story while Googling your name or the names of your friends, hit the back button now.


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